Bridges to Understanding is a nonprofit organization that engages K-12 students worldwide in direct, interactive learning and storytelling to build cross-cultural understanding. For 3 weeks in April 2008, we're bringing students from South Africa, the Tibetan Children's Village in India, Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala together with Seattle students - read about the exchange in their own words!

Friday, April 11, 2008

Compassion according to KT

Today I got a chance to see His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama in a conference of Seeds of Compassion where he answered the questions given by some famous scientists on compassion. I really liked it a lot because the way he spoke and the way he answered those questions was really wonderful.

I come from the same country, same city, and the same town where he lives. Dharamsala is a small town where the Tibetan people try their best to control their anger and be more compassionate but unfortunately the environment out there takes advantage of it and sometimes they can’t be compassionate. You would find different kind of Tibetans, both patient and arrogant, but it doesn’t matter whether or not they are arrogant everybody loves and worships His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama.

From my point of view His Holiness does want to go to his own country Tibet, but if we return to our home and don’t find any family members it won’t feel like home. So I think it’s the same with His Holiness - he wants to go to Tibet with his people and stay out there as he used to, before 49 years ago.

I also want to go to Tibet where I haven’t been. I think that it would be a little hard to adjust out there. I think we can’t always expect the good to happen because whenever you get something good there is also a bad which accopmanies it. As we are the 21st century's generation and we have been growing up using the modern technologies, it would be hard in Tibet to not to be using it anymore because the people in the remote areas don’t have the access to the technologies. It is different in the city because the Chinese have changed it into a very modern place.

The struggle of the Tibetan people is not towards the people living in China because I think that they are innocent and they do not have much idea what is happening in their government as the government in China is not a democratic type of government. Our struggle is with the people who are ruling China.

I think that I can show compassion towards the Chinese government by differentiating between the actor and his actions and taking appropriate measures towards it.

The Olympics in China should not be abolished because I think that through this the people who will go to see the Olympics will know a little bit about Tibet and know that Tibet was not a part of China. I think that more people aware of Tibetan people because of the Olympics is better than being aware from the protesting because due to the protests hundreds of innocent Tibetans are being killed unnecessarily.

I think that we all can develop compassion by lessening others' suffering trough consoling or comforting them and also by reducing one's own egoistic thinking and thinking for others' happiness and wishing for others' well being. Today I learned from His Holiness that the problems we have are due to our own way of seeing them. Compassion can also be developed with a calm and peaceful mind.